Calculating Cloud Cost: 8 Factors to Watch

The decision to embrace cloud should not be purely based on cost. After all, there are many factors driving cloud adoption, and most aren't based on financial savings but agility, says JP Morgenthal, CTO of Application Services at DXC Technology.

"It's more of an operational concern than a cost concern," he explains, noting that, as you adopt cloud-based infrastructure and applications, what should be top-of-mind is not the price tag but the myriad ways in which the change will affect business processes. People are moving to cloud for improved agility, productivity, and quick access to sophisticated tools, he says, not to save money.

"A few years ago, I would have said most are enabling their business to get to the cloud, trying to save money," adds Robert LaMagna-Reiter, director of information security at First National Technology Solutions. "I think they quickly learned that's not the case."

Moving to the cloud is a process that affects the entire enterprise. So, while cost should not be the sole factor driving adoption, it's something all technology and business leaders will want to keep in mind. Cloud is also complicated with several factors driving the overall price. Consequently, cost reduction is no longer a top driver for cloud adoption. But as you prepare to embrace the cloud, you'll want to know how the change will affect your overall budget, and why.

Let's take a close look at eight common and often unforeseen costs that businesses face as they adopt, and operate in, cloud-based environments. Were there any unexpected costs you encountered as your company shifted to the cloud? Feel free to share in the comments.

Kelly Sheridan is the Staff Editor at Dark Reading, where she focuses on cybersecurity news and analysis. She is a business technology journalist who previously reported for InformationWeek, where she covered Microsoft, and Insurance & Technology, where she covered financial ... View Full Bio

I reckon that there's more benefits to having a cloud service than not, but it would heavily depend on y our business and how sensitive your information is. At the end of the day, it's always better to have your own local network rather than a public cloud. If you're running a business, that little b8it of investment would make a very big difference in terms of management and protection of that data once it's uploaded.

It's great to see security get a mention, but it's not just about the relationship between groups. Security tools need to be adapted to support cloud use cases, just like an organizations applications need to do the same. Tools that are poorly adapted, or that bolt on cloud as an additional use case may drive increased cost. Cloud native security tools might not be the answer either, as having two separate tools for cloud and on-premise security monitoring can drive a different type of unexpected cost.

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